Re: Using Debian with lots of users
On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Tim Thomson wrote:
> can't seem to, he says that he can't get shadow passwords to work with
> POP, using Pegasus for Windows. I don't know where he could go wrong here,
> but he's probably using some mickey mouse way.
> I am suggesting he use Debian, and was wondering what the best way to set
> it up would be.
I am using shadow with pop mail, it is working fine here. WHen you install
debian, answer yes when it asks you if you want to use shadow passwords
and then install qpopper or cucipop. Pretty simple.
>
> Note there are lots of users, but many wouldn't use there accounts at all.
> Plus, we only have a 28.8kbps modem, so we shouldn't get too much traffic
> from the remote site. (Hopefully :-)
Have you considered having a better connect host act as your MX and spool
the traffic up for you by uucp? You then connect to your ISP and grab the
mail at regular intervals using UUCP over TCP/IP. You do not have to keep
a mailhost exposed to the internet and it works well.
> Would smail be able to handle it, or should I use exim?
smail would be best if you are considering uucp connectivity, any host on
the internet could be your MX host, exim better if you are going to have a
host exposed to the net at all times.
Exim will do mail delivery to files so that it can be set up to deliver
mail to boxes that have no account on the system. popper is another issue.
I think it needs a passwd file to operate on but in any case, they can
have a null shell (/bin/false) and not be true login accounts.
> I am guessing he has got a ETRN account, but I'm not sure. Fetchmail
> should work with whatever account we have - can it handle 1000 users?
> qpopper - OK with lots of different users.
Wait ... Fetchmail is for pulling mail FROM individual pop3 email boxes
from a remote host to the local host. If he is using that, he is having
to keep track of 1000 different user passwords at the remote ISP.
Do yourself a favor and install poppassd on your system and let your users
set their own password if they use Eudora. It save you a lot of admin
time.
Better find out more about exactly what he is doing before trying to tell
him how to do it :)
>
> Note, we only have 60 computers, (2 labs) so only 60 people max could be
> checking their mail at the same time. The Linux box is a 486DX/2 66 with
> 16meg of RAM, can't remember the hard drive size - probably about 400meg.
400 Meg / 1000 people is what ... 400K for each person.
>
> He was worried about security - if I took most services out of the
> services and inetd.conf then this wouldn't be too much of a problem?
Not really but I would be more worried about disk space if I were you.
> Please help, he's contemplating going to NT - even more problems :-)
If he goes to NT his troubles are just beginning. Wait till he sees how
much an NT mail server costs :-0
George Bonser
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.
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